LexiMax

Odamex has been ported to the original Xbox and Switch, and at one point had a WIP port to the Wii.

It could. Or somebody could be using games as a low stakes escape and relaxation time away from their obligations that they excel at, so it's not representative. Or somebody could be so obsessed with a game that they shirk their real life responsibilities, turning it into something that's the opposite of representative. If you genuinely do not understand why other people engage with games differently than you, that sounds like something you should strive to improve at - understanding others feelings. Think of it as something to “git good” at. 😉

This thread reminds me how great this video is about assist modes in games: Games aren't a reflection of someone's work ethic. It might reflect yours, but people engage with games in a variety of different ways for a variety of different reasons.

People who play games should not be obligated to "Get Gud" at a game just to enjoy it. Games should not be obligated to appeal to gamers of all skill levels. People who play hard games are not superior to people who don't. There's nothing wrong with a hard game gaining functionality to make it easier, either in a patch, in a sequel, or through cheating, to make the game easier. As long as it makes the game enjoyable for the player, it's valid. Or, put another way: It's okay to dislike a game because it's too hard. It's okay for a game to be hard and not be accessible to all skill levels. You're not better than a game journalist because you beat Dark Souls. There's nothing wrong with a Dark Souls sequel getting an "Easy" mode.

Just because food is inauthentic doesn't mean it's not tasty, and you can find an Olive Garden in many many more places than traditional Italian-American cuisine. I don't order from them very often since I live in a city with a glut of choice for restaurants, but I think Olive Garden does okay for being a chain, despite their food sinking to the bottom of my stomach like a stone.

I liked the interactive cutscenes in the first game, but only because they were relatively few and far between. The two longest ones were the introduction and lambda core, and the rest of them were just small vignettes that didn't overstay their welcome. Once you start making the interactive cutscenes cutscene-length, like HL2 did, they get really annoying really fast.

My computer is originally from around the 2019-2020 new year, but I also had the misfortune of having what turned out to be a faulty CPU that needed replacement just a year later, which resulted in a few upgrades along the way as I replaced parts that didn't need replacing. It's just as well, as now I rely on my personal computer for work, and having all those cores is really nice for ripping through a C++ compilation, plus having enough RAM to easily run both my work and personal Windows user accounts.

I'd actually say that Halo 2 was a better game than Half-Life 2. They came out at around the same time, and I played them both on release, and I much preferred Halo 2. I said I didn't like Halo 2's environments, but that was just their overall look and feel, they were serviceable as far as game levels went. It's true that HL2's environments were of higher quality, but I still didn't vibe with the game aesthetically. I suppose Half-Life 2 also had the better story since for its faults it told a complete story without the mid-game meandering that Halo 2 went through. However, Halo 2 was by far the more fun game to actually play. Halo's weapons felt better, the enemies actually felt like challenges, its vehicles felt amazing to pilot, there was very little physics-based filler content, and due to using cutscenes the story could be easily skipped past on subsequent playthroughs. I basically stopped playing Half-Life 2 halfway through "Follow Freeman" out of boredom, but I finished Halo 2 and kept playing multiplayer for months afterwards.

Half Life 2 wasn't really self contained. It very much built on the consequences of the resonance cascade from the first game and had you encountering a lot of your former co-workers, just 20 years on down the line. I'm not really sure where the story could possibly go once Black Mesa is entirely in the rear-view mirror - you need some sort of through-line or else why be a Half-Life game at all? As for the open ending, cutting the story off at the immediate termination of the big bad might work for intrigue when you do it once, but it was really annoying to be rug-pulled two games in a row, and in retrospect I'm glad the episodes were made, even if they left us with a more conventional cliffhanger.

I disagree, as I think the Episodes actually rectified some of the storytelling issues of the original HL2. Even though most of the cast still treated you like The One Free Man, it's all overshadowed by the fact that your "victory" at the end of HL2 didn't deus ex machina the Earth out of the Combine's grasp and caused other problems like the impending destruction of City 17. It also set up some actual intrigue, with some sort of conflict between the newly-freed Vortigaunts and the G-Man hanging over the proceedings. And for all the issues I have with HL2's story, Valve still really knows how to spin a good yarn when it comes to lore and backstory, and I quite enjoyed what the episodes had to offer in that respect, as the ending of HL2 left me quite underwhelmed. I'm also conflicted on the episodic format. Although the story delay after Episode 2 was a real bummer, I'm not sure that getting an Episode 3 in the shape of Marc Laidlaw's proposed Episode 3 would've been a terribly satisfying ending. The trouble is that as it was originally supposed to shake out, the adventure on the Borealis turns out to be completely pointless. It's a suicide mission to turn the ship into a time-traveling bomb that Alyx kills Mossman to put into motion, and yet turns out to be completely pointless as you're not going to shut down the invasion force of a galactic invasion force with a single self-destructing ship. Of course, both she and Gordon are plucked out by the G-Man and Vortigaunts respectively at the last minute, but the cherry on top is that's where the "Combine invasion of Earth" storyline was intended to end, with another time-jump forwards for whatever Gordon's next adventure was. I prefer the the Half-Life: Alyx we ended up with better. It set up the Alyx/G-Man vs Gordon/Vortigaunts intrigue like ending of Episode 3 did, but with room to wrap up the Combine invasion storyline in a more satisfactory way.

I agree, Half Life 2 was mid. What I really enjoyed about Half Life was the fact that the player character wasn't talked about as the second coming of christ. He was just a random scientist who happened to be wearing an HEV suit when shit went sideways and also just so happened to have a front row seat to the catastrophe that caused the invasion in the first place. Once you got to the surface and realized that getting out of Black Mesa wasn't really an option, the entire rest of the story is a series of leads given to you by survivors, prophylactic measures that might help, or it might not. I also appreciated how utilitarian a good chunk of Half-Life's arsenal was. HL2 removed laser tripmines, satchel charges, snarks, and the beegun, and I missed all of them since those opened up tactical possibilities and creative ways of solving the combat puzzles. Combined with the rest of the arsenal, the first game often had situations where I realize "Oh, I'm out of ammo for the weapon I want, but I have these other odds and ends, how can I make this work?" HL2 did add the Gravity Gun, which I liked, but most of the rest of the arsenal additions were very context-sensitive - the boat for the boat sections, the car for the car sections, and a gimmicky ant-lion thing that was useless past the section it was intended for. I also preferred the environments of the first game. HL1 took place in a modern science facility that happened to be located in the middle of a bunch of decommissioned ICBM silos, and there was a lot more variety to it. HL2 looked prettier, but the entire aesthetic had this decayed look to it that I got tired of seeing halfway through the game, let alone the incredibly extended lifetime of custom content based on its assets. But the biggest problem is still the story, HL1 felt like being trapped in a B-movie where your survival isn't guaranteed. HL2 felt like I was being led along by the nose into being the savior of mankind and it really didn't work for me.

Halo 2's multiplayer implementation was groundbreaking, so I think it wins by default. Past the multiplayer, if we want to compare their single-player experiences...honestly then I'm not so sure. Doom: Eternal's story seemed pretty silly, but I was fine with ignoring it. I also appreciated the change of pace, gameplay-wise, but I can understand why some people aren't fans. On the other hand, Halo 2's campaign was a let-down for me. It gets off to a very strong start, but the moment you take control of the Arbiter the story's pacing gets bogged down and never really recovers. Once it became obvious that there were too many loose ends for there not to be a Halo 3, Tartarus activating Delta Halo stopped being a credible threat, and the fight against him feels almost perfunctory. The environment and setpiece design of Halo 2 also was a step down from the first game - I can't remember a single one past New Mombasa. Basically Halo 3 is what I wanted out of Halo 2's campaign.

dean wiki

Dang, kind of a shame that the suite of test PC's dance around the machine I had as a kid, a 486SX25. It must've been better than the 386SX, because I don't think even 10 year old me would've put up with 2.5fps.

Yeah, unfortunately, this is the state of things at the moment - Doom source ports are very much stuck in a "server browser" mentality. Odamex's server does have UPnP support which allows automatic configuration of routers, but support for UPnP is spotty and running a server still fails the "easy for ordinary people to set up" smell test. I can see some ways forward, however: The TSPG model is quite popular - allowing players to configure their own servers. TSPG itself is an imperfect implementation, as it requires a considerable amount of third-party tooling to work. However, what if configurable servers was a feature of the port, and not something you had to build a third party webapp for? Projects like Fightcade prove that it's not impossible for a community-run project to be P2P. It's hard to get information about if they use STUN/TURN, but clearly being P2P hasn't slowed them down, as they have several thousand users at any given time. It's just a matter of development effort. EDIT: To put a point on it, development effort is no small thing. Multiplayer Doom ports are largely coasting on the previous efforts of people like Fly and Carnevil who put a ton of effort hammering out the basics of Doom multiplayer decades ago, and for there to be a fundamental shift like from C/S to P2P it would require a similar effort in order to get listen servers working, lobbies figured out, and so on. It's a lot of work, and and the types of people who are good at this sort of development tend to get snapped up by "real" development jobs with alarming regularity.

And there's the self-snitch. I knew you couldn't keep a straight face but for so long. 😂

How convenient that your rhetoric was designed to invoke those sorts of reactions. Almost as if that was the idea all along. 🤔

Indeed. It's a manipulation on your part, and retreating to more defensible rhetoric now doesn't change the fact that you were deliberately trying to piss people off earlier to...*checks notes*...try and win an internet argument about video game art styles? That's what I don't get. Why bother trolling over a topic this innocuous? Do you really just hate certain art styles and you just wanted to attempt to tilt the argument in your favor through underhanded means? Maybe this is just one part of some larger narrative about unworthy art and media you plan on elaborating on in future trolls? Perhaps you're practicing for something else? Or maybe it's just the obvious reason - you find enjoyment in pissing people off?

You say things that are deliberately confrontational and provocative and then walk it back later by retroactively framing it in a less confrontational light. You have been doing this from the start, and it's not designed to start an earnest conversation, but instead to try and "win" over people who are reading the thread by framing your opponents as unreasonably angry and you as reasonable. So this is all an act on your part, but it kind of relies on nobody pointing out what you're doing. Whoops.

I liked what I played of it. The guns have punch, the levels wind and wend the way good Doom levels do, the music bops, and it's an all-around good time. My only complaint is that some of the lower-tier monsters can look a little samey due to their denaturation, but the higher tier the monsters and weapons got the less of a problem it became, so it's not a hangin' offense, and other than that minor nitpick I think the game looks great in motion.

An amazing effort in making one of the harder to appreciate classics (due to there being no viable alternative to the DOS version) accessible to all! Congratulations on the release!

In the long run, neither one of them won, really. They were at their peak when the viable alternatives for online play were few and far between, and games that were its contemporaries like Halo, Team Fortress, and Counter-strike turned out to have much more longevity. Not to take away from how shitty it is that UT is being abandoned, but the whole "Quake vs UT" argument is really tired at this point.

Too bad my engine has succumbed to bitrot because apparently asking for the javascript ecosystem to be stable for two years is too much to ask.

Odamex 10.3 has released. Download it from Sourceforge or Github. Another minor release with some nice new features thrown in. The most noticeable new feature is the brand new PWAD selector tab when you start Odamex. It will search the cl_waddownloaddir and waddirs cvars, the -waddir command line parameter, and DOOMWADDIR and DOOMWADPATH environment variables for WAD files. You can select which ones you want to play and even rearrange their load order. Aside from that, perhaps the most noticeable fixed bug is the fact that a long-standing weapon desync caused by picking up a weapon that was not known to the client yet has been addressed. This should virtually eliminate cases where the wrong weapon is held at the start of levels or on a reset. That's enough of a summary. Let's dig in! Added The Odamex boot window selector now has a PWAD selector to go with it! Thanks Mia! Odamex's window will now flash if the window is not focused and you respawn. Thanks Mia! Obituaries now show up for MBF21 customized weapons and monsters. Additional versions of the Unity IWADs are now noticed by Odamex. Ctrl-Delete and Alt-Delete now delete words on either side of the cursor in the console. Chat macros are now usable on the numeric keypad if numlock is enabled. Changed A much better error message should show up if you try to join a server without the proper IWAD. It also tells you if it found an IWAD, but was an incorrect version. Odalaunch will now show all servers for the current major version only. Odamex will now respond to all launcher requests for the current major version, instead of checking the major and minor version. Fixed Instances where weapon pickups were triggered for weapons that were not known to the client yet, such as on level load or reset, should now no longer cause a weapon desync. A crash that occurred when an actor doesn't have an associated subsector when looking for players has been fixed. Latched cvars now show pending changes correctly instead of a purple square. The traditional status bar was not rendering correctly in non-cooperative modes, this has been addressed. A circumstance where Odamex would crash due to attempting to render level data that had been freed due to an error condition has been fixed. DeHackEd monsters could not walk underneath thing bridges, now they can. Line special 192's searching routine was broken when 0 was used as a search base - this is now fixed. Thanks Mia! The BIGFONT comma was way too high, now it's where a comma should be. Generalized linedefs were not being flagged as switches online, now they are. A few MIDI controller events weren't being passed through properly, leading to music weirdness that happened when switching between certain songs. Thanks Ceski! Fixes music in Sunlust going from Title Screen to MAP01. Fixes music in Three is a Crowd warping from MAP03 to MAP10. Yet more vanilla demo desyncs have been addressed - now all of Doom, Doom 2, Plutonia and TNT demos play without desyncs. Using 10-key functions with numlock should now work as expected. MAPINFO compatflags are now properly ignored, instead of breaking the parser. Tag 666 was occasionally causing the game to crash, and Tag 667 simply didn't work at all. Not anymore. The "Server Full" message was missing a flags field, causing the client to not understand it - now it does. Automap's pan speed was bigger than intended when follow mode was off, fixed. Thanks Mia!

Oh my, Horde won. 😳 I'm so glad that the gamemode seems to have made the splash it has, and I'm so very glad it was worthy of such an amazing community mapping project to go with it. Everybody worked their butt off on the coding, testing, and mapping ends of things, and the result is a wonderfully unique and fun creature. And of the other Cacoward winners, I have to give a special shoutout to both the team behind Ultimate Doom Builder and MTrop of DoomTools. Being able to script map editing capabilities was incredibly helpful for making some of the base Horde maps - in particular being able to script perlin noise to create sand dunes - and DECOHack is a dream come true for yanking monsters out of different resource packs - or even converting some DECORATE ones. Congratulations to all the winners and silver runners-up!